KREUZADER (Posts tagged NASA)

NASA, ULA Launch Parker Solar Probe on Historic Journey to Touch Sun
“ The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket launches NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force... — NASA, ULA Launch Parker Solar Probe on Historic Journey to Touch Sun
The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket launches NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Parker Solar Probe is humanity’s first-ever mission into a part of the Sun’s atmosphere called the corona. Here it will directly explore solar processes that are key to understanding and forecasting space weather events that can impact life on Earth.

Source: nasa.gov

parker solar probe nasa rocket

nasa juno space jupiter

Seeing Titan with Infrared Eyes
“ These six infrared images of Saturn’s moon Titan represent some of the clearest, most seamless-looking global views of the icy moon’s surface produced so far. The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by... — Seeing Titan with Infrared Eyes
These six infrared images of Saturn’s moon Titan represent some of the clearest, most seamless-looking global views of the icy moon’s surface produced so far. The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The images are the result of a focused effort to smoothly combine data from the multitude of different observations VIMS made under a wide variety of lighting and viewing conditions over the course of Cassini’s mission.

Source: jpl.nasa.gov

titan cassini space nasa

spaceexp

Today in 1969, 1 day 9 hours and 59 minutes after Apollo 11 launched , the crew sent this broadcast from 130,000 miles away - about halfway to the moon

apollo space nasa

“ Cerealia Facula, also known as the brightest spot on Ceres, is shown in this stunning mosaic close-up view. The high-resolution image data was recorded by the Dawn spacecraft, in a looping orbit, from altitudes as low as 34 kilometers (21 miles)... — Cerealia Facula, also known as the brightest spot on Ceres, is shown in this stunning mosaic close-up view. The high-resolution image data was recorded by the Dawn spacecraft, in a looping orbit, from altitudes as low as 34 kilometers (21 miles) above the dwarf planet’s surface. Cerealia Facula is about 15 kilometers wide, found in the center of 90 kilometer diameter Occator crater. Like the other bright spots (faculae) scattered around Ceres, Cerealia Facula is not ice, but an exposed salty residue with a reflectivity like dirty snow. The residue is thought to be mostly sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride from a slushy brine within or below the dwarf planet’s crust.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

dawn ceres nasa space asteroid

To make Curiosity (et al.) more curious, NASA and ESA smarten up AI in space
““The development of space-ready hardware is extremely slow,” Woods notes. “Those things are allowed to have one blue screen in 15 years despite high doses of radiation they... — To make Curiosity (et al.) more curious, NASA and ESA smarten up AI in space
“The development of space-ready hardware is extremely slow,” Woods notes. “Those things are allowed to have one blue screen in 15 years despite high doses of radiation they need to withstand. So working with different modalities and making more advanced AI systems are all great ideas, but at what computational cost? When will we be able to actually fly those things?”
[…]
“And there is no other way,” says Arora of the current state for space AI. “The farther we go into our solar system, the less feasible teleoperation will become. We can’t deal with it without autonomy.”

Source: Ars Technica

robots space artificial intelligence nasa esa

Reanalysis of Viking Mission Data Consistent With Aromatic Organic Compounds on Mars
“The first successful landers on Mars were the twin Viking spacecraft in 1976. Their primary goal was to determine if life could survive on Mars. The Viking landers... — Reanalysis of Viking Mission Data Consistent With Aromatic Organic Compounds on Mars
The first successful landers on Mars were the twin Viking spacecraft in 1976. Their primary goal was to determine if life could survive on Mars. The Viking landers looked for organic matter in the martian soil. Organics are critical for astrobiology since carbon forms the key ingrediant for all known living organisms on Earth. Shockingly, a main instrument on the landers, the gas chromatograph‐mass spectrometer, detected no organic matter. This was a surprise to scientists, who knew organic material was deposited by comets and meteorites to the martian surface. The apparent absence of organic molecules in the martian surface material became a scientific mystery for decades. In 2008, the Phoenix spacecraft explored the north pole of Mars. Phoenix discovered a salt in the martian soil which is rare on Earth. After further conclusions of the presence of this salt on Mars and complemental experiments on Earth, scientists proposed this salt might have chlorinated any organics inside the Viking instruments. We searched the Viking data for a possible reaction product between the salt and organics in the Viking oven, chlorobenzene, a chlorinated organic molecule. We found evidence of chlorobenzene. We conclude the chlorine component of the chlorobenzene is martian, and the carbon molecule of the chlorobenzene is consistent with a martian origin, though we cannot fully rule out instrument contamination.

Source: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

mars nasa exobiology biology

Source: nasa.gov

nasa

Source: jpl.nasa.gov

dawn ceres space asteroid nasa

“ A self-portrait by NASA’s Curiosity rover taken on Sol 2082 (June 15, 2018). A Martian dust storm has reduced sunlight and visibility at the rover’s location in Gale Crater. A drill hole can be seen in the rock to the left of the rover at a target... — A self-portrait by NASA’s Curiosity rover taken on Sol 2082 (June 15, 2018). A Martian dust storm has reduced sunlight and visibility at the rover’s location in Gale Crater. A drill hole can be seen in the rock to the left of the rover at a target site called “Duluth.”

Source: nasa.gov

mars nasa mars curiosity

How the Earliest Images of the Moon Were so Much Better than we Realised
“Fifty years ago, 5 unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon, taking extremely high resolution photos of the surface. They were trying to find the perfect landing site for the... — How the Earliest Images of the Moon Were so Much Better than we Realised
Fifty years ago, 5 unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon, taking extremely high resolution photos of the surface. They were trying to find the perfect landing site for the Apollo missions. They would be good enough to blow up to 40 x 54ft images that the astronauts would walk across looking for the great spot. After their use, the images were locked away from the public, as at the time they would have revealed the superior technology of the USA’s spy satellite cameras, which the orbiters cameras were designed from. Instead the images from that time were grainy and low resolution, made to be so by NASA.

Source: worldofindie.co.uk

moon space nasa

Source: twitter.com

mars curiosity mars nasa

NASA Finds Ancient Organic Material, Mysterious Methane on Mars
“NASA’s Curiosity rover has found new evidence preserved in rocks on Mars that suggests the planet could have supported ancient life, as well as new evidence in the Martian atmosphere... — NASA Finds Ancient Organic Material, Mysterious Methane on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover has found new evidence preserved in rocks on Mars that suggests the planet could have supported ancient life, as well as new evidence in the Martian atmosphere that relates to the search for current life on the Red Planet. While not necessarily evidence of life itself, these findings are a good sign for future missions exploring the planet’s surface and subsurface.
The new findings – “tough” organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks near the surface, as well as seasonal variations in the levels of methane in the atmosphere – appear in the June 8 edition of the journal Science.
Organic molecules contain carbon and hydrogen, and also may include oxygen, nitrogen and other elements. While commonly associated with life, organic molecules also can be created by non-biological processes and are not necessarily indicators of life.
“With these new findings, Mars is telling us to stay the course and keep searching for evidence of life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, in Washington. “I’m confident that our ongoing and planned missions will unlock even more breathtaking discoveries on the Red Planet.”
“Curiosity has not determined the source of the organic molecules,” said Jen Eigenbrode of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who is lead author of one of the two new Science papers. “Whether it holds a record of ancient life, was food for life, or has existed in the absence of life, organic matter in Martian materials holds chemical clues to planetary conditions and processes.”

Source: nasa.gov

nasa mars mars curiosity exobiology

“ NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter’s magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth’s simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated... — NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter’s magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth’s simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated network more convoluted in the north than the south. Further, Juno’s radio measurements show that Jupiter’s atmosphere shows structure well below the upper cloud deck – even hundreds of kilometers deep. Jupiter’s newfound complexity is evident also in southern clouds, as shown in the featured image. There, planet-circling zones and belts that dominate near the equator decay into a complex miasma of continent-sized storm swirls. Juno continues in its looping elliptical orbit, swooping near the huge planet every 53 days and exploring a slightly different sector each time around.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

nasa jupiter space juno

NASA Wants to Create the Coolest Spot in the Universe
“This summer, an ice chest-sized box will fly to the International Space Station, where it will create the coolest spot in the universe.
Inside that box, lasers, a vacuum chamber and an... — NASA Wants to Create the Coolest Spot in the Universe
This summer, an ice chest-sized box will fly to the International Space Station, where it will create the coolest spot in the universe.
Inside that box, lasers, a vacuum chamber and an electromagnetic “knife” will be used to cancel out the energy of gas particles, slowing them until they’re almost motionless. This suite of instruments is called the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), and was developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. CAL is in the final stages of assembly at JPL, ahead of a ride to space this August on SpaceX CRS-12.
[…]
When atoms are cooled to extreme temperatures, as they will be inside of CAL, they can form a distinct state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this state, familiar rules of physics recede and quantum physics begins to take over. Matter can be observed behaving less like particles and more like waves. Rows of atoms move in concert with one another as if they were riding a moving fabric. These mysterious waveforms have never been seen at temperatures as low as what CAL will achieve.

Source: jpl.nasa.gov

nasa space international space station

KREUZADER (Posts tagged NASA)

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